Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [83]
‘The lady Lucia? Exquisite creature,’ said the broker. ‘But with her husband deceased, and Diniz, forgive me, a child, the lord Simon had to act in his own interests. He decided to sell what he could get out.’
‘What he could!’ Gelis said. ‘He owned half … The great booby’s sold half the business?’
‘Lend you a brick,’ Nicholas said automatically. The woman Bel glared at him. He was thinking.
David de Salmeton seemed unaffected. He raised his free hand by a half-inch. ‘Simon is not of Portuguese birth. His permit to trade was subject to the whim of the Portuguese government, with whom his stock is not high, and he had a youth and a widow as partners. The St Pol plantations were his to sell, and the investments to realise.’
‘He sold them to you?’ said Nicholas suddenly. He wouldn’t have thought so, but for something he imagined he read in the other man’s face. It might have been irony.
‘Why, no,’ said David de Salmeton. ‘I was unable to tempt him. He was afraid, it seems, to add to our strength as his rival elsewhere.’
‘Well, he had some sense,’ said Gelis. ‘But that seems to be the extent of it. He should have sold to young Diniz. At the very least, he should have waited to talk to him.’
‘He had an unmatchable offer,’ said the agent. ‘Conditional on immediate acceptance. I regard his decision as sensible.’ His eyes had moved to Nicholas, with the same amused shadow behind them.
‘Any man would,’ Nicholas said. ‘To whom did he sell?’ To himself, his voice sounded over-clear, but that was because the tables were empty, and the sounds of hilarity no longer to be competed against. He thought, anyway, he guessed the answer.
It came in the musical voice that was of a piece with the face and ringed hands, and at odds with the neat muscularity of the frame. ‘He chose the Lomellini of Genoa. You know them.’
Nicholas knew them. He knew the Lomellini from Cyprus and Rhodes. He knew them from Bruges, where they engaged in trade for the Duchess of Burgundy. The Lomellini bought alum, and sent laden supply ships to Ceuta. Members of the Lomellini in Lisbon controlled the entire Portuguese exports of cork and cane sugar: their methods had forced the Vasquez lands out of profit until the Duchess’s secretary, a Vasquez, complained. Through intermarriage with Portuguese ladies of birth, the Lomellini had obtained naturalisation. Here on Madeira, the brothers Urbano and Baptista cultivated great estates, and sold wine and sugar and honey in Europe. They also sent vessels to Africa.
Through its favour at court, St Pol & Vasquez had been able to hold its own among the two hundred families permitted to exploit Madeira. Even now Tristão was dead, his son might have done as well, with the help of his factor, and the support of his partner and uncle. Now, without the St Pol money and assets, Diniz was left with a broken-backed heritage.
For a moment, Nicholas looked out to sea. Simon had sent him an ultimatum and he had come west to meet it, not knowing if he would escape with his life; or if, in saving his Bank, there would come a time when he had to choose between that and the family his mother had married into.
Simon had issued a challenge. Simon had come and, wittingly or not, had destroyed the livelihood of his sister and nephew. And then he had gone, without waiting for Nicholas. Simon the athlete; the jouster finer than he would ever be. Simon, who had won every fight they had ever had in the past and who had, but didn’t know it, the ultimate reason to kill him. So why wasn’t he here?
The flash of a cup warned him, but half its wine still struck his shoulder; then Gelis tossed the pewter on to the board. She said, ‘Oh good, Claes, I have your attention. Of course, you and the Vatachino planned this between you.’
He let the wine drip while, thinking, he looked at her. Surprise